Saturday, December 1, 2012

WWWTP? 'Heroes' Edition

For more WWWTP, see earlier posts here and here, and ChemBark's here and here.

Recently, my special someone and I decided to watch NBC's Heroes, front to back (thanks, Netflix!) Not familiar with the show? Its premise: special powers imbued by random genetic mutations, sort of an X-Men-meets-Matrix hybrid serialized prime-time drama.

So, you might expect that since several major characters study molecular biology, and the show groks concepts like viral mutation, limb regeneration, and space-time fluctuations, that it would hire a scientific consultant to help with set design...right?

...Wrong. Below, I've snapped some stills from Seasons 1 & 2 of the show. No plot spoilers, just pure, unadulterated fake science-y goodness.

Genetics professor Mohinder Suresh muses in his Brooklyn, NY apartment.
Methinks that "ladder" thing is supposed to represent DNA.
No telling what the giant 1960s molecular models behind it are...

A chalkboard still from Season 2, in Dr. Suresh's "lab." The figure label (offscreen) reads: B-DNA.
There's so many things to comment on here (syn? A3? double-bonded H?).
Most remarkably, it's pretty close to the base pairs its supposed to represent! (B for effort?)

Across the lab from the "B-DNA" chalkboard, there's some free-standing whiteboard doodles.
The resolution isn't high enough (pre-HD) to figure out exactly what these were,
but I think the bottom structures might be riboses. Hey, he's a geneticist, right? : )

Also in Season 2, main character Peter visits the home of a former molecular biologist. Of course, she, like most scientists, has framed journal covers and science art adorning every wall of her home (don't we all?).
Guess we'll just leave this one to 'artistic interpretation.'

Update (12/1/12) - Chemjobber has SPOILED it, telling me about maitotoxin's appearance in the later episodes. I've found a 2008 post that seems to agree...

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